Learn How to Format a Research Paper Without Fail

Writing a research paper with interesting ideas and credible evidence is only a part of the academic task. You need to give your content a consistent look, or format, in line with your educational establishment’s guidelines.

How to format a research paper, and what conventions do you need to follow? This guide will explain the writing style of research paper projects. We’ll cover the most common paper styles, such as APA, MLA, and Chicago, to give you useful writing tips.

Why Are There Different Research Paper Styles?

At first, newbie students feel confused by the abundance of research paper styles. Why should there be so many options for seemingly identical writing tasks? In reality, the distinctions are significant. Knowing them will help you find the most suitable research paper style to apply to your home tasks.

APA is the referencing manual of the American Psychological Association. Logically, this style of research writing is used in psychology, sociology, and education research assignments. It utilizes the author-date referencing method. This way, the focus of APA is on concise documentation of evidence.
MLA is the manual issued by the Modern Language Association. Thus, it is a preferable approach in humanities tasks, such as literature, arts, and philosophy. It’s more common in research assignments that focus on the context. Students are required to cite the author’s name and the concrete page on which they found the cited piece of evidence.
Chicago/Turabian is also a popular format of a research paper in history or fine arts subjects. It relies on notes and footnotes, which suit citation-heavy research projects. This way, Chicago removes the load of citations and explanations from the main body of text.

The guide “Organizing Academic Research Papers: Academic Writing Style” explains more stylistic nuances. The manual contains many insights that both newbies and experienced students will find useful.

How to Choose a Format for Research Paper Projects

If you’re free to choose a format for research paper, the task may seem challenging at first. With so many options at your disposal, which one suits your research assignment the best? A couple of useful tips that may help you navigate paper writing styles are outlined below.

Study the professor’s prompt first. In the overwhelming majority of cases, teachers give concrete instructions in the prompt.
Review the college’s guidelines. It often happens that an educational institution has a unitary guide for all its departments. Thus, you may stick to it.
Consider the source types you will need to use. Working with articles and reports makes APA an appropriate choice, while close reading of books or poems is better covered with MLA referencing. Chicago is a more universal approach that spans across academic areas. Thus, it’s suitable for historical research, fine arts analysis, and the like.

APA Style Research Paper – Key Characteristics

APA is the most common referencing method used across disciplines. Thus, you always have a high chance of getting assigned to an APA style research paper. Its principles are as follows.

A title page with the title, student’s name, and the course details.
An abstract containing a brief description of the project.
Double-spaced text of 12 pt size.
Intelligible font (Arial, Times New Roman, and the like).
1-inch margins on all sides.
Left-indented text.
A list of References at the end, citing all third-party sources in alphabetical order.
Author-date citations in the text (e.g., Johnson, 2024).

It is also notable that APA presupposes specific formats for headings of different levels.

Level 1 heading: bold, capitalized
Level 2 heading: bold, capitalized.
Level 3 heading: bold, non-capitalized.
Level 4 heading: italicized.
Level 5 heading: italicized.

MLA Style Research Paper – Key Characteristics

When writing an MLA style research paper, you will have a format slightly different from that of APA and Chicago. Here are the main conventions to follow.

No title page or abstract.
A running head on top of the page that contains the student’s last name and page number.
One-inch margins on all sides.
Left-indented text.
A Works Cited list at the end, listing all external evidence.
Author-page citations in the text (e.g., Johnson 234).

Chicago Style Research Paper – Key Characteristics

If you’re facing a Chicago style research paper, use the following guidelines.

A title page with course details and the student’s name.
Double-spaced, left-aligned text throughout the research assignment.
One-inch margins on all sides.
Page numbers in the upper right-hand corner of the pages.
Headings are written in title case, similar to MLA.
Footnotes for citing sources, appearing either at the bottom of the page of citation or at the end of the entire document.

Generic Research Paper Style Recommendations

The three formatting approaches discussed above explain the writing style and structure of research papers projects to a certain degree. Yet, you may also benefit from a broader understanding of academic requirements. Here are the universal elements that every research paper will share.

Font size. You will need to have a legible, reasonably sized font in your research assignment. The golden standard is Arial and Times New Roman. The standard font size is 12 pt, but for Arial, 11 pt will also be fine.
Margins. Almost all papers have 1-inch margins on all sides. The exception applies only to dissertations, which have a thicker inner margin for easier binding.
Line spacing. The standard of academic writing is double spacing. Yet, some professors may ask for 1.5-spaced texts.
Page numbers simplify tracking of the printed assignments. So, they are typically included in all referencing formats.
The paragraphs are usually indented at the beginning, with the standard 0.5-inch space.
Paper size. While many professors accept papers in printed form along with digital submission, you need to keep to proper choices as well. The standard size is 8.5 by 11 inches – a letter-size option. This convention is dominant in North America’s colleges and universities.

These aspects may help you when you are clueless about the assigned format. Embrace the art of referencing to get higher grades and make your papers look consistent and neat.